At 7/18/10 07:17 PM, Canas wrote:
Hopefully somebody knows what the fuck I'm saying
Well in my eyes the drug movement symbolizes the struggle of the individual to create an identity free of that given by society, yet at the same time represents the outcast seeking a niche of his own, which is inherently indicitave of the ills of society.
Honestly, drugs are a catalyst, not a solution. I once argued that drugs can free your mind, but I now know that only a mind seeking freedom in the first place will find such an end. All too often I see otherwise talented and capable individuals succumb to habitual abuse of drugs. Maybe it's the escape, maybe it's just the high.
This is not to say, however, that I think drugs are deprimental to our consciousness, in fact quite the contrary. Really, it's one's approach to them that dictates their outcome. If one like myself, who seeks introspection and new ideas while maintaining that a drug experience is only just that, seeks such things that one is liable, although not guaranteed, to find it.
However people who do it just to get high all day because it's easier than being fully present, people who find themselves thrust into it by peers, and people who play with the wrong substances all too often get lost in the miasma.
Ultimately, I think that if we educated people on drugs instead of using misinformation and scare tactics, not only would we be bereft of most of the problems with drug abuse we face today, but I believe we would be further along in our search for the truth behind consciousness. After all, what better way to view oneself and one's world than from a new standpoint?
But, back to the reality of the impact of drug use in our (western) culture. I will refer again to the search for individual identity. Society tends to impose upon its constituents what is best for itself, and not the single unit of man. We live in a world where our government officials, behind a curtain of deceit and secrecy, proliferate addictive drugs like crack-cocaine and meth, while persecuting those who are caught up in the trap, all in the effort to stamp out the freedoms and identities of those who would disagree with a state-oriented existence. All the while we have underground chemists producing for us psychedelics and other drugs like LSD, DMT, MDMA and the like at great risk. Sure, most are just in it for profit, but some aspire to provide for their fellow man an experience that can help liberate him from the social dogma he is so inundated with.
At the end of the day what matters is not who got high, or how high, or with what, but what they actually DO in the world. The one-in-five (in my experience) of the people who choose to thusly expand their minds, consciousnesses and spirits who feel the drive to better their world are one of our greatest hopes for overcoming the totalitarian imposition of a greed- and ego-based society.
Nothing will change the current order except for mass action, and nothing will spurn that on aside from mass enlightenment. Throughout history peoples have revolted after being pushed so far, but all that's ever come of it is a regression back into the easy complacence of a provided life. I would mark a BIG difference between change brought about of rage, and change brought about of love (even if it's only two sides of the same coin). Rage is vindictive, self-serving. Love is selfless, pure, and once FULLY realized, self-sustaining.
Most people just want to be told what to do and what to believe, because it's easier to deal with than self-determination. The consequences can be put off on someone else, even moreso when it's someTHING else like a faceless conglomeration of assumed and abstract authority such as our current governments. However, this is not human nature, it is human conditioning.
Are drugs the savior of this world? No, absolutely not. At the end of the day, again, human ACTION, not human EXPERIENCE, is the direct cause of everything we experience. However, human experience IS the catalyst of action and as such I believe WHOLE HEARTEDLY that altered states of mind, and not even altered states so much as new ideas ARE an engine of good in our future.
Where it goes, nobody knows, but as long as we sit idly by, it will NEVER be satisfactory.